


songbird and rattlesnake

by quadrille



Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: Contracts, Gen, Missing Scene, Underworld, Vignette, Yuletide, Yuletide 2019, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:53:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21854035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quadrille/pseuds/quadrille
Summary: Three times the king met the girl.
Relationships: Eurydice & Hades (Hadestown)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 18
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	songbird and rattlesnake

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The_Midnight_Girl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Midnight_Girl/gifts).



> A random Yuletide Treat, because I saw your prompt and couldn't resist — hope you enjoy!

### way down hadestown || kinda makes you wonder how it feels

The first time the king saw the girl, she was wide-eyed and staring, with more hunger than awe.

The sound of the booming train whistle and its rattling rails had drummed into her bones, and the boy had taken up station in front of her, instinctively shielding the girl from Hades with his heroic arm flung out, holding her back. People and bystanders were standing outside the cafe, their drinks forgotten: evidence of the scattered merriment that the god had interrupted when his train came roaring out of the earth early, like a great beast with steam roiling off its flanks, metal chewing up the fertile ground.

Persephone had taken up grudging position at his side, but everyone else was staring and staring. He tipped the edge of his sunglasses, surveying the girl over them. Eurydice’s expression was defiant; intrigued. The song had caught her. He could tell. They sang of going _way down_ and her ears perked up, her curiosity piqued.

_Did you ever wonder what it’s like on the underside?_

She did. She wondered.

Hades made a thoughtful noise in the back of his throat, and then he turned on his heel and promptly ignored her, discarded and dismissed as if she’d never been. The girl’s gaze followed the king and queen as they strode onto the train, as Hades held his wife’s hand and she flounced up the steps, chin raised high and not meeting his eye, coldly furious.

There was the deep drumbeat of the engine starting up again, and they were gone.

And the chill began.

  


### hey, little songbird || why not fly south for the winter?

The second time he saw her, her bones were showing under her skin, shoulders narrow in her oversized jacket, her body swallowed up by it. She was half-starving. The winter had not been kind.

Eurydice held the neck of her jacket closed, trying to conserve body heat. And he paced like a prowling panther, stalking circles around her, sizing her up. To her credit, she stared back defiantly, but the more he spoke (silver-tongued god of business and negotiation, of deals with strings attached), the more he could see her resolve weakening.

“Your ticket,” Hades said, and he offered the coin like a lifeline. Like a gift.

She took the deal and rode down.

Below, he caught a glimpse of her during the rally; his dark earth-brown eyes caught the flicker of movement through the crowd, the workers, the chant. Eurydice roamed through them starry-eyed, in awe at the heat, the flame, the heartbeat of the machines. The pounding drumming through the earth.

She joined in the song. He led her to his office.

When he walked in after her and gently shut the door behind, the last thing he saw was Persephone’s face: frozen into a mask of bitter anger, and the jealousy he’d successfully stoked like feeding a furnace.

But now that they were in his grandiose office, the foreboding gesture made, he wasn’t sure what to do next— Eurydice was nosing around like a curious bird, scrutinising the pieces of ore lined up in neat rows on his bookshelves. A painting of the king and queen hung on the wall, both of them looking severe in black, the borders trimmed in real gold. The massive desk of fossilised wood. Rich leather armchairs; made of dead animals.

Everything rich and opulent, made to impress.

“What do I do now?” Eurydice asked, cutting straight to the point. She was fidgety, restless.

Hades went to his desk and started rifling through the drawers. He felt, suddenly, very tired. This was the same as any number of workers who had wound up down here, arrayed on his assembly line, feeding the industrial monster. When he set the paperwork on the desktop, he aligned it at neat angles and withdrew a fountain pen. Filled its nib with a dark blue-black ink, the colour of a night sky, a bruise.

“Read the terms and sign on the dotted line,” he said, careful to see if she would notice the catch.

But it was bricked-up in dense legalese — the contract had been specially crafted for precisely this — and he could see Eurydice’s attention wavering on the third page. She would be gainfully employed; she would have a home and a roof over her head, safe from the elements; she would never go hungry again. It sounded right. It sounded good.

She signed.

Hades paused, considered telling her. Didn’t. Instead he carved his name into the contract, and though she didn’t notice the change, _he_ felt it — he was the god of the underworld, he always carried the reckoning, the number of souls under his jurisdiction — and saw her soul disengage like a wisp, a little bird fluttering out the window and away, into nothing.

  


### wait for me || the road to ruin

The third time he saw her, she was a lonesome figure on a long and lonely track, walking back to Hadestown.

No longer the wide-eyed excitement when she first came here; nor the giddy headlong rush of Orpheus running into her arms when he arrived. Instead she was exhausted, treading one foot after the other, walking in defeat.

When he saw her, he knew the boy had failed.

Hades’ mouth pursed. It was what he had meant to happen, and expected to. Men were foolish and weak, he knew that well enough. They doubted their women. Could never simply accept a good thing when they had it. Hades himself was proof of it.

She approached like she was walking to the noose.

Persephone should have been here to welcome her. This goddess who had no children, but who would bundle Eurydice safely into her arms with maternal care — but it was winter now, and she wasn’t here, and so all the girl had to welcome her home were the toll inspectors and the king himself.

Hades stood on the border, and waved her on through, past the long lines and queues. Best not add insult to injury.

“He turned around,” he said, his voice a low bass rumble. More a statement than a question.

“He turned around.” Eurydice sounded empty: all the anger and grief gone out of her, leaving a blank slate instead. “You got what you wanted.”

“I didn’t _want_ this,” he pointed out, sharply.

She exhaled, asking: “Where do I go?” She sounded lost, and her hands were fluttering at her sides, then touching her collarbone. Bony wrists, hungry heart, looking out-of-place in the heavy-duty overalls and tattered workshirt.

He would ordinarily put her up in the workers’ dormitories, just another one of the nameless faceless masses, blurring into oblivion. Nothing special. Just another worker on the wall.

But that _voice_ of hers—

Hades glanced down at her, arms crossed like an imperious foreman. The heat here didn’t touch him, and he knew that somewhere up above, the world was starting to slowly warm towards spring, with his wife walking on bare earth and trailing her fingers along the trees. _What would Persephone do?_

“My wife’s speakeasy,” he started, paused. Considered. It had been the open secret that he knew she ran, the bit of rebelliousness that he knew and allowed and permitted, because it kept her sane. “You could run it.”

Eurydice burst into a scornful laugh. “Be a canary in your coal mine?”

“It’s better than working the mines,” and there was a warning note in his voice. The king had shown clemency, and would grant as much as he could, but he was still god of the underworld.

It was like the fight went out of her. “Fine. I… fine.”

Her foundation had been ripped away from her, and had abandoned her. The urge was there, to chide her with almost fatherly criticism: this was what you got, for building on slippery and unreliable poetry rather than solid rock. Frivolity, rather than the unbending steel that Hadestown was made of.

But she had seen enough and suffered enough today, and so Hades simply tilted his head instead, nodding towards the road. To the shuttered building with the whiskey-soaked tables and the stage and the bright lights and long bar. A place that could need an owner, someone to light up that stage, to sing to the workers and lift their spirits this half of the year. She wasn’t Persephone, but her voice was heavenly.

“Come on,” Hades said, and for what it’s worth, he tried to sound gentle. Not quite so forbidding and cruel. He wasn’t sure if he succeeded. “Your job’s waitin’ for you.”

After a pause to muster herself back together, Eurydice strode on ahead, her shoulders hunched in her coat, fingers buried in its pockets. At least she would survive to spring. And then his wife would return, and she’d know the right words to say: to gently brush the girl’s short hair back from her forehead, hand her some bright apple from the world up top, probably say something about how all men grow to disappoint you (and Hades would be sipping his drink in the background, darkly amused), and she would pull her into a dance. Could keep her company for the next six months.

And it wouldn’t be the same, and the girl would still be dead, but at least it was something.


End file.
